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Twitch wants you to ‘Cheer’ your favorite broadcasters with premium emotes called ‘Bits’

Twitch, the popular social video and gaming platform is announcing a new way to support your favorite broadcaster. Now, to show support, you can send a ‘Cheer,’ which is a highly visible chat message with animated emotes that viewers can buy with ‘Bits.’

Stay with me here.

Bits are in-platform currency that allow viewers to tip their favorite broadcasters with nothing more than a text-based message. To send a tip, you’ll simply have to type ‘cheer’ (without quotes) followed by a number — cheer10, cheer100, etc. Doing so will send the broadcaster a personalized message of your creation, along with one of the following emotes:

During the beta period, viewers can Cheer for any of more than 60 partner channels, after purchasing bits — priced at $1.40 for 100.

Oh, and the revenue from bits is split between developers on Twitch and the broadcasters themselves, a cool new way to show your support to the Twitch community as a whole. As a bit of a thank you for the support, you’ll also get to sport one of the new chat badges pictured below.